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No settlement in sight for Thailand's south

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra appears more ready than previous governments to negotiate a settlement of the Muslim insurgency in the south, but her ability to end the violent stalemate is limited. Car bombings are thought to reflect insurgent opposition to talks with an administration aligned to Yingluck's brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, while the army opposes decentralization. - Jason Johnson (May 22, '12)




Singapore, Hong Kong unite against 'locusts'
A fatal car smash after a speeding Ferrari jumped a red light in Singapore has brought resentment against mainland Chinese into sharp focus, igniting a tirade of abuse against "locusts" flooding the job and property markets. Inflamed opinion spread with rumors that the "financial investor" dead at the wheel of the limited edition sports car was the brother of a Chongqing mafia boss and had been accused of money laundering in Hong Kong. - Augustine Tan (May 22, '12)

Lebanon's new wild card: Shaker al-Barjawi
The murder of prominent Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Wahed on Sunday, and the street battles that followed, forced open a new chapter in Lebanon's supercharged sectarian tensions and put the name of pro-Syria Arab Movement Party leader Shaker al-Barjawi on everyone's lips. A civil war veteran with the credentials needed to lead a Sunni militia serving as Hezbollah's proxy, Barjawi is the new wild card in a polarized political mix. - Sami Moubayed (May 22, '12)

INTERVIEW
The 'limitless horizon" of capitalism
Costanzo Preve, born of Italian parents and with an Armenian grandmother, never had it easy; he chose the path of uncompromising philosophy, and he begun to recognize the historical failure of communism very early. He is also convinced that globalization has produced a storm, an economic tsunami that has created a series of common problems that in the past centuries did not exist. - Claudio Gallo (May 22, '12)

North Korea's 'organizational life' in decline
Since the 1950s, weekly indoctrination and mutual criticism sessions have done more to instill the greatness of the Kim family into the North Korean psyche than state-run media, with local committees also more active in punishments than political police. However, as Kim Il-sung's "national Stalinism" is eroded and the black economy explodes, "organizational life" is increasingly seen as a troublesome formality.
- Andrei Lankov (May 22, '12)

NATO agrees to Afghan timetable
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has approved at its Chicago summit plans to hand over security in Afghanistan to local forces by mid-2013 and to withdraw combat troops by 2014, pledging that Kabul "won't stand alone" and that Afghan troops will be ready to battle the Taliban. Scant progress in repairing ties with Pakistan suggests the withdrawal presents its own challenges. (May 22, '12)

COMMENT
Ritualistic rhetoric in US sanctions

President Barack Obama last week extended the United States' sanctions policy on Myanmar under "national emergency" rules, despite the country's internal reforms and the negligible threat it presents the US. The move follows a concerted campaign by human-rights groups and expatriate Burmese to delay the elimination of sanctions that far from helping achieve reform, just hurt ordinary people.
- David I Steinberg (May 22, '12)

SPEAKING FREELY
Missing links in the Arab Spring
Such is the nature of revolutions: They are initiated by dreamers, carried out by brave people, and taken over by opportunists. Several missing links in the Arab revolution suggest the process of rebuilding may take a long time, and require much patience and sensitivity among global powers wanting to see a stable and democratic Middle East.
- Monte Palmer (May 22, '12)

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Iran nuclear talks gaining traction
Iran's leadership is confidently reassuring the public that any nuclear deal with the "Iran Six" in Baghdad talks on Wednesday will not sacrifice the national interest. Tehran has calculated that France's presidential change and the eurozone crisis have sapped Europe's fighting spirit, with the need to keep oil prices stable before November's election also cooling hawkish sentiment in the United States. - M K Bhadrakumar (May 21, '12)

Chen hands Beijing a hollow victory
As Chen Guangcheng settles in New York, Beijing can rest assured that its efforts to minimize domestic fallout over the blind activist's escape have worked well and that Chen is effectively silenced. However, this Pyrrhic victory does nothing to address the deep-rooted corruption in local politics that Chen suffered imprisonment and torture to agitate against.
- Kent Ewing (May 21, '12)

THE ROVING EYE
War and cheeseburgers
The new cheeseburger diplomacy, sealed at the Oval Office by President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande, is supposed to save Greece, revamp the eurozone and reignite the US economy, just in time for the November US presidential election. It also means agreeing to talk some more with Iran.
- Pepe Escobar (May 21, '12)

Cold comfort for Japan-South Korea ties
The intractable issue of compensation for women forced into sexual slavery during Japan's World War II occupation of South Korea looks likely to undermine the US-led united front against China's naval expansion and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Stirred in part by nationalist pressure in the run-up to presidential elections in the South, the gap between the two sides' perceptions on the sensitive issue remains as wide as it ever was.
- Kosuke Takahashi (May 21, '12)

SPENGLER
What if Facebook is
really worth $100 billion?

Facebook and its social media imitators diminish us by substituting unpredictable human interaction with a pre-arranged display window whose purpose is to block our gaze from the real person behind it. Sadly, the system - and its raison d'etre to advertise one's conformity to commercial culture while preserving the illusion of individuality - is worth a great deal of money. And even sadder, it is unlikely to fail. (May 21, '12)

Taiwan's Ma plays it cool

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's re-inauguration speech on Sunday didn't sketch a roadmap for unification with China, as some had expected. Ma instead attacked Beijing's human-rights policy, praised his island's defense industry and denied a cross-strait peace agreement was being planned, with critics seeing Washington's hand at work.
- Jens Kastner (May 21, '12)

CHAN AKYA
Penalty shoot-out -
the political edition

English soccer team Chelsea emphatically showed that context and chance can overcome all expectations in the sporting arena, a point relevant for leaders of the Group of Eight nations engrossed by Saturday's European final when applied to their own bitter political and economic games. (May 22, '12)

New 'brics' in ASEAN's wall
Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations keen to join the big economies of the developing world should make a priority, individually and collectively, of dealing with the small "bric" - bureaucracy, regulation, interventionism and corruption - if they want to better compete in 2015 and beyond. - Curtis S Chin (May 22, '12)

The riddle of Scarborough Shoals
In the matter of the Scarborough Shoal mess, the Philippines started it and the infamous Chinese nine-dash line encompassing almost the entire South China Sea looks like an audacious claim drawn from an appetite for aggression. A closer look reveals that there is some genuine method to Beijing's madness, and a chance that gas and greed, rather than international law and principle, may salvage peace in the South China Sea.
- Peter Lee (May 18, '12)

THE ROVING EYE
NATO occupies sweet home Chicago
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization hopes that If you can't beat them in Pashtunistan, you can at least corral them in the home of the blues, with NATO's Chicago summit planned to instill in members the "common values" behind drone warfare and base expansion. As riot police lock down the city, some partners likely fear they've married into the mob. - Pepe Escobar (May 18, '12)

<IT WORLD>
Facebook floats
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now officially worth close to US$20 billion after successfully bringing off the initial public offering for his young social network site. Fans keen to grab a piece of the company may have to pay 50% more than the initial price when the shares start trading Friday. (May 18, '12)
Martin J Young surveys the week's developments in computing, science, gaming and gizmos.

BOOK REVIEW
Cherry-picking from
China's success

What the US Can Learn from China by Ann Lee

This book forces the reader to confront China's growth in the midst of America's decline, drawing attention to the reasons US politics became too self-serving, too short-sighted and too partisan. The author doesn't argue the Chinese approach is flawless, but she does hold up China's single-minded fixation on economic growth and a leadership process based on experience as examples US policymakers must consider. - Benjamin Shobert (May 18, '12)


China trade move
with Japan, Korea is
Asian game-changer

A trilateral free-trade agreement between China, Japan and South Korea, though tough to achieve, will have significant effects on the global economy and on the strategic environment in Asia, with the willingness to hold formal talks nearly as important as the FTA itself. - Brendan O’Reilly

Beijing-Taipei highway
improbable but possible

The Taiwan government appears to be paying little notice to calls for a transport tunnel to be built linking mainland China and Taiwan, yet serious business interests advocating the daunting 124-kilometer challenge can look to Beijing for support and a history of engineering triumphs. - Jens Kastner

Oil boost for Bangladesh
Two new oil discoveries in the north of Bangladesh will help relieve the country's dire energy shortages and ease pressure on its balance of payments. Production may begin next year, with the prospect of more finds to come in the same area. - Syed Tashfin Chowdhury

THE BEAR'S LAIR
The looting of savers
Savers, for too long robbed by governments, should be allowed a risk-free interest rate above the rate of inflation and offered a real return without investing in the likes of Facebook. Such a change in monetary policy by debt-burdened authorities probably won't happen until inflation gets seriously out of hand. - Martin Hutchinson




CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
The jig is up
One remarkable feature of JPMorgan Chase's recent US$3 billion-plus loss is boss Jamie Dimon's lack of familiarity with the details in spite of prior publicity on the bank's precarious position. Yet his incredible complacency merely mirrors that of the wider financial world.
Doug Noland looks at the previous week's events each Monday.



How to make China lend quicker, in secrecy
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the prestigious American think-tank Council of Foreign Relations, wrote last week that the Barack Obama administration has quietly "altered its plans to move some US security resources from an unthreatened Europe to an uncertain Asia" ... administration leaders realized they had gratuitously offended European allies ... - M K Bhadrakumar

Obama upset over
Pakistan supply routes

The Russians have a favorite saying, "Where is the bumaga?" Maybe, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen and US President Barack Obama never heard of it. Bumaga, by the way, means the sheet of paper in Russian ... - M K Bhadrakumar



Uncle Sam's reluctance to go quietly into the night is understandable. Watching China do to its neighbors what Amerika has routinely done with its "backyard brothers" can only inspire envy.
H Campbell
United States
   Go to Letters to the Editor



1. What if Facebook is really worth $100 billion?

2. Iran nuclear talks gaining traction

3. Taiwan's Ma plays it cool

4. War and cheeseburgers

5. Cold comfort for Japan-South Korea ties

6. North Korea: Red in tooth and claw

7. The riddle of the Scarborough Shoals

8. Europe's lost model identity

9. New 'brics' in ASEAN's wall

10. Chen hands Beijing a hollow victory

(24 hours to 11:59pm ET, May 21, 2012)


























 
 


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